How to set up a Pipeline

A Pipeline is a linear series of stages that can be set up for projects and opportunities. By setting up a Pipeline, anyone on your team can see the status of a project or opportunity, what has been done, and what still needs to be done.

Combining Pipelines with activity sets will also generate tasks for different members of your team as each stage is completed, helping everyone stay coordinated.

Before setting up a Pipeline, write out all the stages in your process and any tasks or events that are done at each stage. For example, an opportunity Pipeline to manage a sale from prospect to signed contract might look like this:

Now that each step is mapped out, an Insightly administrator can add a Pipeline and its stages to Insightly. Because Stage 02 includes tasks and events, we'll need to set up an activity set to automatically create those records when the stage is reached.

Double Tip!

Stage Names: Start your stage names with numbers and include a leading zero for single digits. This will display them in the correct order when you create reports and dashboards later. For example, 01 - Contact Katy Perry, 02 - Email Natalie Wood... 11 - Phone Meg Ryan, etc.

Set up the Sets: It's better to create your activity sets before you set up your Pipeline, otherwise you'll have to come back and edit the Pipeline later.

You must be an Insightly administrator to set up a Pipeline on your account.

To set up a new Pipeline:

Go to System Settings > Pipelines.

Enter a name for the new Pipeline.

Tick the box for opportunities or projects, depending on which object will use this Pipeline.

Click Add Pipeline. The new Pipeline will now be added to the list.

Click Edit Stages next to your Pipeline.

Enter a name for the first stage.

When setting up a Pipeline for Opportunity records, you have the option of setting an automatic Probability of Winning percentage for any opportunity that reaches this stage. (The probability for any opportunity can be manually edited after the stage change.)

If you'd like to use this feature, enter a number from 1 to 100 representing the probability of winning.

If this stage will trigger an activity set, select the set from the dropdown list.

Click Add Stage.

Repeat the last three steps for each of your stages, until your Pipeline is complete.

Your new Pipeline will now appear as an option when creating or editing opportunities or projects.